column_length in data dictionary views

 Hello:
I'm a student and we're learning Oracle. In the data dictionary views, one of the fields that appear there is teh column_length (in several views such as the DBA_IND_COLUMNS. The definition that Oracle gives is teh following:
COLUMN_LENGTH : Indexed length of the column

Can anyone explain me what this mean??

For instance I ran the following query:

SELECT *
FROM USER_IND_COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_NAME IN ('VARIETY', 'FLOWERS') AND Index_Name IN ('PK_VC','PK_FID');

and the result is

INDEX_NAME	COLUMN_NAME	COLUMN_POSITION	COLUMN_LENGTH
PK_VC		VARIETYCODE	1			22
PK_FID		FLOWERID	1			10

What the 22 and 10 mean??

Thanks for the help Received on Thu Feb 18 1999 - 10:44:35 CST